By swirling chunks of white, milk and bittersweet chocolate into a batter made with unsweetened chocolate, then melting and drizzling more all over the top, San Francisco chocolatier Michael Recchiuti says this sweet has “all the chocolates I like in one brownie.”

F&W’s Kate Krader has been making these fudgy, sweet-salty brownies since she was 10 years old. As a kid she used regular table salt; now she recommends a flaky sea salt like Maldon, because the flavor is less harsh and it melts so nicely into the batter, accentuating the chocolaty sweetness.

“Like all great desserts,” says Anne Quatrano, “these brownies have only three pertinent flavors: chocolate, butter and walnuts.” Quatrano, an F&W Best New Chef 1995, is the chef of a small empire of restaurants in Atlanta.

These wheat-free, butterless brownies are decadent and dense. “It’s really, really hard to make a good vegan brownie,” says chef Erin McKenna. Her first efforts using applesauce and vegetable oil were cakey or fluffy. It took her six months of making small adjustments to perfect them.

Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink’s pastry chef, Hedy Goldsmith, created this stupendous dessert, in which fudgy peanut butter brownies get topped with bananas caramelized in dulce de leche and served with scoops of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and her house-made peanut brittle.

Pastry chef Cheryl Burr loves candy, as is obvious from her homage to the Almond Joy. Her luxurious take consists of a supremely fudgy brownie topped with a layer of chewy, flaky, exceptionally tender coconut. She dots each bar with a crunchy roasted almond, then coats them in silky bittersweet-chocolate ganache.

Andrew Zavala, 11, discovered the recipe for these gooey brownies in a kids’ cookbook by Pamela Gwyther called Let’s Cook! when he was seven years old. A self-professed kitchen scientist, he likes to revisit the recipe often, substituting ingredients and noting the results. “My favorite version uses two ounces each of dark, milk and white chocolate,” he says.

Brownie meets cake in this fun dessert from Emily Luchetti, a cookbook author and the executive pastry chef. She bakes the batter in muffin cups so the edges turn crispy and chewy like a brownie, but the inside becomes soft and fluffy like a cake.